Earthquake shakes millions of Britons

Millions of Britons awoke late last night to the disorienting experience of the house shaking as a minor earthquake set off car alarms, broke windows and rattled nerves across England and Wales.

Thousands of people dialled 999 or rang their local police station after the quake struck at 12.54am. No injuries or serious damage was reported.

The tremor measured 4.8 on the Richter scale - a minor shake in world terms, but the strongest quake to hit Britain in a decade. A much smaller aftershock, with a magnitude of 2.7, was recorded at 4.32am.

The epicentres of both quakes were located about 9km beneath the city of Birmingham, but the main quake was felt by people as far apart as south and west Wales, Northamptonshire, south Yorkshire, Oxfordshire and London. Glenn Ford of the British Geological Survey (BGS) said: "We'd only classify it as a light earthquake. This would have been right under the city of Birmingham itself and we've already had reports of the fire brigade being called out to fallen chimneys." The earthquake lasted for at least 10-15 seconds, he said.

Mr Ford said some 200 quakes took place in Britain every year, but only 10% were strong enough to be felt by the public. This quake was the strongest since a 5.1 magnitude earthquake shook Bishop's Castle in Shropshire in April 1990. Other considerable seismic events since then have included a 4.1 tremor in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, last October and an earthquake centred on Warwick, measuring 4.2, which struck exactly two years ago today on September 23 2000.

Mr Ford said today's quake would have been felt by the whole of Wales and England and said the BGS was "swamped by calls and emails" from across Wales and from Yorkshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.

West Midlands police said that the force received 5,000 calls to their switchboard within an hour of the tremor and 600 calls to the 999 service. A spokeswoman said they had received no reports of any injuries or damage to property.

Staff with West Midlands fire service, whose control room is based in the centre of Birmingham, felt the tremor and some callers had complained of structural damage to their homes. An operator said he felt the building shake. Shortly afterwards the force began receiving calls from across the region, with the majority coming from Walsall and Smethwick.

Describing the moment the earthquake struck, Oldbury resident Richard Flynn said: "All the power was cut off and seemed to be so for about a five mile radius. The shaking and trembling was really quite severe. Quite a few people came out of their houses wondering what was going on. The streets were in darkness."

He said the power was restored around 20 minutes later.

Greater Manchester police said hundreds of people called immediately after the tremor - with most saying they thought they had intruders in their homes after they were being woken by noises. Forest Bank prison in Salford also called to report a suspected jailbreak, only to find the noises prison officers had heard were also caused by the tremor.

"People were calling to say they thought they had been broken into or that there was someone on their roof," said a police spokesman. "Most just wanted to know what was going on so we have been reassuring people that it was a one-off." Julian Bukits, an assistant seismologist with the BGS, said an earthquake of magnitude 4 was equivalent to the power of a small nuclear weapon or 1,000 tonnes of TNT. Mr Bukits said: "An earthquake like the one we've just experienced happens regularly in places like California and in natural earthquake zones. There are no plate borders here so it may just be a local fault. Nonetheless, for the UK it's a big earthquake."

The largest earthquake to be experienced in the UK occurred in 1931 and measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, Mr Bukits said. However the epicentre then was Dogger Bank in the North sea, so the quake had little impact on the mainland.